fêting the forgotten; curating the uncultivated

Tag Archives: #OldsCutlassCiera

We just caught wind of the fact that an ’86 Olds Cutlass Ciera that once belonged to Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton is up for sale. That gave us an excuse to delve into our extensive image bank and retrieve some examples of similar cars we’ve captured in the wild.

Hill’s last ride

The Cutlass Ciera was a GM A-platform car that had much in common with corporate siblings Pontiac 6000, Chevy Celebrity and Buick Century, distinct from the rear wheel drive Cutlass Supreme and smaller Cutlass Calais. We have no idea what Ciera is supposed to mean but we’re thinking that Ford of Europe used Sierra so maybe GM just improvised something that sounded similar. Oldsmobile had so much luck with the Cutlass nameplate that their marketers were profligate in applying it to just about anything that wasn’t a full size Ninety-Eight or Eighty-Eight. The ploy worked; over the course of its 14 years of production the dull-as-dishwater Cutlass Ciera was Oldsmobile’s best selling model. We found a very clean, not to mention very boring, ’90 Cutlass Ciera S wearing fake wire wheels recently and had the foresight to photograph it. Like the former First Lady and would-be 45th President’s ’86 Cutlass Brougham, it wears badging that includes flags of many European nations plus Canada. This was meant to denote a level of technical sophistication and worthy of consideration for potential foreign car buyers. As if!

According to current owner and former White House gardener — we’re not making this up — Mike Lawn, the car which wears its original Arkansas plates may very well have been the last car which she personally drove, hanging up her keys when her husband was inaugurated on January 20, 1993. It seems to have been retained to give First Daughter a hooptie on which to learn to drive. If only those WH family residence walls could talk: “Thanks, mom. My father is the leader of the free world and I have to figure out how to parallel park with this?”

The excitement builds!

The car that Mr. (really his name) Lawn is selling has only 33,000 miles on it, a reflection of the fact that the Presidential limo (a ‘93 Cadillac Fleetwood-based car) obviated the need to run up any miles on the car for an eight year span. It offers a modicum of middle class elegance — it has blue crush-velour seats — but is, in fact, very basic, despite the fact that it wears a the quasi-luxury “Brougham” badge. Yes, it has crank ’em up windows. Then again, with power from a mighty 4-cylinder, 151 cubic inch “Tech IV” motor generating 110 horsepower and 135 pounds of torque, who would really voluntarily drive such a vehicle if they didn’t absolutely have to do so?

The wild blue yawn-der

We found an Cutlass of minimally more recent vintage, a Ciera SL, that proudly wears an ABS badge on its his ample aft. This denotes that it is equipped with an anti-lock braking system, the equivalent of having an “I’m trying to be responsible” sign on the back of one’s car. We’re OK with that but not the fact that the trunk lid seems to need adjustment.

Trunk funk

There’s a walk-around video of Mrs. Clinton’s former car and we feel compelled to share it with you in the spirit of full disclosure. Try to stay awake through its duration and, for heaven’s sake, don’t post nasty political comments. It’s just someone’s old car so try to restrain yourself if you truly want to make America great again.

If you’d like to purchase your very own Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera there are many to choose from. We especially like this ’89in Washington. Washington, Indiana that is. It’s price to go at just $1900 and the sales pitch on this ad could very well be appropriated by a Presidential candidate. To wit: “How comforting is the low-mileage of this great 1989 Oldsmobile Cutlass? This terrific Oldsmobile is one of the most sought after used vehicles on the market because it NEVER lets owners down.” How can you NOT vote for that?

If you’ve stalked a feral car and would like to submit a photo of it for posting consideration please send it to us: info (at) feralcars (dot)com OR through our Facebook page.

Note: While we strive for factual accuracy in our posts, we readily acknowledge that we we sometimes make inadvertent mistakes. If you happen to catch one please don’t sit there and fume; let us know where we went wrong and we’ll do our best to correct things.